1. Field
The present invention relates generally to medical instrument guide devices, and more particularly to instrument guide devices for guiding cervical plating attachment instruments.
2. Description of Related Art
When medical professionals need to perform a task such as drilling, tapping, or screwing into bone, it is often beneficial for the hole, threads, or screw to be straight and for the drilling, tapping, and/or screwing tool to reduce excess lateral pressure to the bone that could weaken or break the bone around the hole. For example, when drilling, tapping, or screwing in order to attach a cervical plate to underlying bone, the holes should be straight into the bone at an angle that promotes solid attachment.
Early solutions for attaching a cervical plate to underlying vertebrae involved drilling, tapping, and/or screwing without any guide. Without a guide, the surgeon had to maintain a particularly steady hand and had to rely on judging the angle of entry with the naked eye. Eventual solutions involved drilling and tapping a hole through a guide, then removing the guide and screwing the screw into the hole by hand or without the aid of a guide.
More recent guides include both single- and double-barreled guides. These guide solutions, however, use the guide barrels themselves to stabilize the guides on or over the cervical plate. Such solutions provide limited stabilization. In addition, these prior solutions do not control the angle at which holes can be made relative to the cervical plate. As a result, holes often will be made while the guide barrels extend from the cervical plate at angles that are too caudad or too cephalad. Further, prior single-barreled guide designs often necessitate two or more separately-manufactured guides to be used for different bone screw holes of the cervical plate, and often required one single-barreled guide to be inserted after another, or the same single-barreled guide to be lifted from the cervical plate and positioned over another bone screw hole.
Thus, there is a need for improved instrument guide devices for attaching cervical plates to underlying vertebrae.